- Birmingham Energy Institute researchers global grid vision entails connecting renewable energy supply from 14 regions worldwide.
- The research aims to increase the availability of renewable energy
- The approach would reduce regional electricity costs by 31%, 10%, and 10% for Europe, North-East Asia, and North America.
Birmingham Energy Institute researchers are working with C-EPRI Electric Power Engineering Ltd (C-EPRI) to create an industrial-scale prototype of next-generation HVDC technology. This could pave the way for a renewable energy-based global electricity grid.
Professor Xiao-Ping Zhang, Director of Smart Grid at the University of Birmingham, leads a team that will use Birmingham innovations to improve high-voltage, direct current (HVDC) power transmission systems used for bulk electrical power transmission.
The researchers recently published an economic analysis demonstrating that when a global energy supply grid links together the world’s continents, coupling HVDC transmission with 100 per cent renewable energy generation can deliver significant cost savings (at least 20 per cent). Their global grid vision entails connecting renewable energy supply from 14 regions worldwide, spanning all continents and time zones. The European Union, North Africa and the Middle East, Eastern Russia, Western Russia, Central, South, East, and South-East Asia, Oceania, Western, Eastern, and North-eastern North America, and South America are among the regions.
“The prototype based on our theoretical model is now under development,” Professor Zhang said, adding that “our research aims to increase the availability of renewable energy – by improving the efficiency and reliability of transmission to reduce costs for householders and businesses. In addition, we must be able to use renewable energy to provide a critical safety mechanism for controlling frequency dips in national power grids. Our vision for a global energy grid has the potential to transform the way we use renewables.”
Data were collected for renewable energy supply and global electricity demand as part of the comprehensive analysis. The researchers then calculated transmission costs over land and sea, potential power losses during transmission, and a global grid’s operational and management costs based on HVDC.
A more regional perspective, provided in a previous paper, shows that adopting this approach would reduce regional electricity costs by 31%, 10%, and 10% for Europe, North-East Asia, and North America.
Professor Zhang has advocated for the concept of a global energy grid and has developed several technologies to address the practical challenges associated with the transition to renewable energies.
His inventions include award-winning technologies for improving efficiency and eliminating commutation failure in long-distance HVDC power transmission and methods for stabilizing local grids that receive renewable energy.